Bob Deacon - Global Social Policy in the Making: The Foundations of the Social Protection Floor

GLOBAL SOCIAL POLICY IN THE MAKING

The foundations of the social protection floor

Bob Deacon

First published in Great Britain in 2013 by

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ISBN 978 1 4473 1236 9

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Cover design by Qube Design Associates.
Front cover: image kindly supplied by Jupiter Images.

For Bodhi Alexander Phoenix Deacon-Slater,
born September 2012;
that he might thrive in a more socially just world

The Recommendation is a breakthrough in global social policy. National Social Protection Floors can be a major tool to achieve the targets of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. (Michael Cichon, director of the International Labour Organizations Social Security Department, 13 June 2012)

Social security for all: Building social protection floors and comprehensive social security systems is the result of a decade of research, economic, fiscal and actuarial studies, legal analyses, tripartite consultations at global, regional and national levels, consultation and collaboration with our sister organizations in the UN [United Nations] system, dialogue with the international financial institutions as well as with a large number of civil society organisations and, most prominently, intense discussions during three sessions of the International Labour Conference (2001, 2011 and 2012). The consensus that emerged from these consultations and discussions was finally, in June 2012, promulgated in the form of a new international labour standard: the ILO [International Labour Organization] Social Protection Floors Recommendation, 2012 (No. 202). Consensus documents that have to be adopted in international or, as in this case, global decision-making processes, often lose their bite, yet this document stands out as an exception. At the heart of these messages is this: there is no excuse for any society to put off building social security for its members, and it can be done at any stage of development, even if gradually. All societies can grow with equity. (Guy Ryder, director-general of the ILO, November 2012)

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